Quarterback's Secret Baby(44)

I managed not to lose my shit before getting back into the Suburban and slamming the door closed behind me. It was only then that I punched the dashboard hard enough to leave a dent and sat there in the driver's seat raging. I don't even know who I was raging at. Tasha? Myself? The fact that she'd walked away even after she knew that what had happened at prom wasn't my fault? I was used to getting my own way in those days. Not getting it was cause for an explosion of adolescent rage. If I'd been just a little bit smarter I would have realized the anger was just a cover for something else - hurt, loss. She was gone. I knew it. And it felt like she'd ripped out my heart and taken it with her.





Chapter 18: Kaden


Tasha said she was OK with messaging, talking on the phone, meeting up for coffee - those sorts of things. So that's what we did. She was on lockdown, though, in spite of our continued communication. It was almost worse than not being with her at all - the cool, casual tone of her messages, the way she gathered up her things in a businesslike manner after we met somewhere to talk. And she always left before I wanted her to.

By the time August rolled around I was thoroughly sick of it. Not sick of Tasha, but sick of the torture of not being able to be with her the way I wanted, the constant longing - a longing I sometimes saw reflected briefly in her own eyes before she looked away or changed the subject abruptly. One day, it hit me. Later than it should have. She was done with me. There wasn't anything else I could do. I went to sleep that night with an emptiness in my heart. When I woke up the first thing I did was go straight downstairs and inform my parents that I'd changed my mind about going to the State university.

My parents looked at me, and then at each other, realizing that this meant I was now open to going to Brooks - the top football university in the country and the place they'd always wanted me to go. "Are you - are you sure, son?" My father asked.

"Yes, I'm sure. It's a better program at Brooks. And, hey, it's in California! I don't know why I was so resistant." That was a lie because I did know why I'd been so resistant, but there was no need to tell my parents that. They had wanted me to go to Brooks ever since it became obvious that I had the real potential to go on to the NFL.

My mom looked down at her phone. "It's almost September, Kaden. Don't you think it's a little too late to be making this decision?"

"They'll take him." My dad replied before I could. "They've been trying to recruit him since he was in the tenth grade, we don't need to worry about timing." He looked up at me. "Do you want to call them or should I?"

And there it was. A thirty-second conversation that profoundly changed the course of my life. It took me a while to accept that things were never going to go back to the way they were with Tasha but I did manage it, eventually. And once I'd accepted it there was no reason not to go to Brooks. Within forty-eight hours of talking to my parents, my enrollment was confirmed. Classes started on September sixth and the first football practice was the very next day. I barely had any time to pack, let alone adjust to the new reality. And I didn't tell Tasha, either. Not until I arrived at Brooks, anyway. My parents took me out for dinner and then we said good-bye. My mom cried a little before they got in a cab to go back to the airport, but neither of them could conceal their pride.

The football players had much better dorms than the regular, non-football-playing students. For one thing, we got our own rooms. Mine was in one of the oldest buildings on campus, a Victorian stone mansion covered in ivy, just like all my mental images of college had led me to expect. My room had dark hardwood floors and eleven-foot ceilings. The communal area was huge and packed with leather sofas. Someone told me later that it used to be a ballroom.

After meeting a few of the other players that day, I finally went up to my room at about ten o'clock, not sleepy at all. All of my teammates so far had looked huge and fit in a way that those at Reinhardt High hadn't. I was no longer a big fish in a small pond. Was I going to be able to hold my own? I let the thought rattle around my head for a few minutes before calling Tasha.

"Hello?"

It was odd to hear her voice - so familiar - in such unfamiliar surroundings.

"Hey, Tasha. It's me."

"Kaden. What's up? Why are you calling this late?"

I looked down at my watch, confused, and then realized we were in different time zones now. It was after ten where she was, which meant her mom and her niece would be sleeping.

"Shit," I said. "I forgot about the time difference. I'm not calling from Little Falls."

"You're not? Where are you?"

"I'm at Brooks. In California."